Predicted 2000-2010 Central American deforestation hotspots
and diffuse deforestation areas

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Overview of the most significant predicted spatial deforestation features GUATEMALA: The Petén province is known to be a major deforestation hotspot in Central America (Achard et al., 1998; Grunberg et al., 2000; Hayes et al., 2002), which was initiated in the 1970s by the government incentives for agricultural development (Kaimowitz, 1995a). It is in this area that all pasture expansion into forest takes place. Pasture clearly is the dominant forest replacing land use, although cropland expansion is not negligible, mostly in the Sierra. HONDURAS: While cropland expansion is predicted to be rather spatially disperse, pasture expansion into forest seems to take place in active frontiers concentrated in the larger forest areas in the centre of the country. Parts of forest are expected to be converted into pasture around the natural savannah lowlands in the east. NICARAGUA: The north-western forest at the Honduran border is predicted to be largely converted into pasture and active frontiers in the east, especially along the road to the north-eastern savannahs, threaten the continuity of what would be the “Mesoamerican biological corridor”, established in 1997 by the presidents of the seven countries of Central America. COSTA RICA: Pasture expansion into forest is expected to be low, highly disperse taking mainly place in small forest patches in the north-west (including the Nicoya peninsula) and towards the border in the north-east. PANAMA: Pasture expansion into forest is predicted to be of considerable magnitude and threatens a large part of the remaining forest in the southern Azuero peninsula as well as the centre. The forest dominated eastern part of the country is be characterised by a disperse pattern of forest conversion into pasture as well as cropland, mainly around lake Bayano, while along the Panamerican highway pasture expansion extents further into the eastern forest towards the Colombian border.